But hold on a second, people. That is the number of users LinkedIn has ever registered. It’s the easy-to-inflate stat that we’ve in the past dinged Google+, Twitter and others for touting instead of real current numbers about how many people actually actively use their services.

The reality is, people can sign up for your site and never return, or become frustrated and quit, or just stop caring at some point.

Perhaps LinkedIn is a bit different, because some people use it as a static resume site, and the majority of its revenue comes from recruiters and subscribers. Fair argument — there’s value in having a LinkedIn profile even if you don’t visit it every day.

This is exactly the kind of “bullshit metric” — page views, registered users, app downloads — that people in the industry, including Mixpanel and Andreessen Horowitz, are currently railing against for being static and unreflective of a good user experience.

A spokeswoman for LinkedIn said the company does not disclose active user numbers.

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